


Post-Cantina Blues

by draculard



Series: What Happens in the Outer Rim... [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And sometimes that Grand Admiral is Thrawn, And sometimes that girl is an Imperial Grand Admiral, Han Solo has a girl in every port, How the Thrawn trilogy would change if Han happened to fuck Thrawn in a cantina before Book 1, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26187295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: After having the best sex of his life with a blue-skinned alien in an Outer Rim cantina, Han starts hearing some ... troubling reports about the Empire's mysterious new leader, Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Relationships: Han Solo/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Series: What Happens in the Outer Rim... [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901695
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	Post-Cantina Blues

Han and Chewie staggered off the Falcon silently that night, both scowling and covered in grime. Neither of them was in the mood to talk, let alone debrief. Yet another failed mission — and just like last time, Han had no idea where or why things had gone wrong.

He didn’t know how he could possibly swing this one in his favor before the Council. They’d call him before the Senators to explain himself — as always — and he’d be forced to admit that things had gone sideways, yet again. Everywhere he went along his planned routes, he ran into trouble — either the Empire had gotten there before him and turned his contacts to the other side, or the resources he’d planned to commandeer for the New Republic were simply gone. 

He was putting together a lame defense in his head, his mouth set in a grim line, when he walked through the doors of Imperial Palace and ran right into the last person he wanted to see: Mon Mothma.

“Captain Solo,” she said coolly.

He grimaced. So news of his failure had already reached Coruscant. “Listen,” he said, “I can explain—”

“There’s been an attack,” said Mothma, interrupting him brusquely. She put a hand on Han’s arm, steering him down the hall to the war room with her. “Everyone is already assembled. They’re discussing it now.”

An attack? Han picked up the pace a little; suddenly his worries about his own failure seemed superficial and small. When he reached the war room, everyone was gathered around a holodeck, watching in grim silence as footage played. It took him a moment to decipher everyone’s faces through the blue light of the holo and find Leia. 

Sidling up next to her, he murmured, “What happened?”

“Imperial remnants,” said Leia. Her tone was dismissive, but there was a faint line between her eyebrows that set off warning bells in Han’s head. “They attacked the shipyards at Sluis Van.”

Sluis Van? Han took a closer look at the holo, his heart pounding. What was the Empire doing along the Rimma Trade Route? That was his trade route, his specialty — and for years, it had been one of the few routes in the entire galaxy not clogged with Imperial ships. 

“You remember those mole miners stolen from Nomad City a few weeks back?” Leia asked him.

Oh, geez. Han didn’t like the way this conversation was going. Nomad City was another of his mysterious failures. He forced his face into a wooden mask and said, “Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, it’s the Empire that stole them,” said Leia darkly. “We’re still trying to suss out exactly what happened, but it looks like they somehow sneaked the mole miners and at least forty TIE fighters into the cargo bay of an old A-class bulk freighter — they must have had a cloaking shield on the inside somehow, that’s our best bet for how they got past the sensors — and then let them all go once they were inside. The miners attached to no less than fifty ships, including all Mon Calamari Star Cruisers in the area; we’re still not sure on the details, but all fifty ships are gone now.”

“Destroyed?” asked Han, his pulse quickening.

“Stolen,” said General Rieekan from across the holodeck. His voice was heavy as he pressed a button on the deck before him, rewinding the holo footage and pausing it on a single staticky image. “This is the freighter in question. It exploded spontaneously before the attack.”

Suddenly, staring at the freighter, Han couldn’t remember how to breathe. It was a battered old A-class bulk freighter, like Leia had said. The ship was rusted to all hell, with a chipped and faded paint job curling up from the underside. It wouldn’t have looked the slightest bit out of place in a scrapyard; it was completely anonymous, completely unnoticeable, completely nondescript.

But Han had seen it before.

In fact, Han had fucked somebody _inside_ it before. It was the exact same shitty little freighter he’d banged a blue-skinned alien in outside of some Outer Rim cantina. He could still remember the smell of hyperdrive fuel and motor oil inside the freighter’s sleeping quarters; he could still feel the alien’s warm skin beneath his hands, his pulse point throbbing against Han’s tongue.

Han cleared his throat, trying to banish the blush from his face. _Get it together, Solo,_ he told himself. Fifty ships stolen — that was a massive blow to the New Republic. He should be thinking about _that_ , not about his fantastic lay … or said fantastic lay’s possible connection to the Empire.

“We need to figure out who’s responsible for this,” said Rieekan gravely. “This sort of strategic thinking isn’t just unprecedented for the Empire; it’s downright out of character. We’re seeing the mark of an entirely new commander here — someone who’s either just entered the Imperial ranks or been hiding out of sight this entire time. We need to figure out who he is immediately.”

“And why he’s come out of hiding now,” Leia added.

* * *

With the whole galaxy aware that fifty ships had been stolen from the New Republic, Han found his old smuggler contacts drying up even faster than normal. Nobody wanted to be on the losing side — and it had taken them five whole years after Endor to even begin convincing people they were the winners. Now, all that progress was gone.

So it struck him as something of a surprise when Talon Karrde, notorious neutral party, contacted him out of the blue.

“A Grand Admiral?” Han said, reading the report with his eyebrows furrowed.

“That’s what it says,” said Luke with a shrug. There was a dark look in his eyes that belied his casual tone.

“But I thought we accounted for all the Grand Admirals,” Han protested.

“Well, evidently we missed one,” said Leia. Unlike Luke, she wasn’t even trying to hide her bad mood. Her lips were drawn down low in a scowl. “Karrde says the man came to him months ago, before the Sluis Van attack. He raided Myrkr and drove Karrde out … though I get the impression that was more Karrde’s personal decision than a necessity.”

“Mykr,” Luke murmured, examining the report. “What’s on Myrkr?”

“Whole bunch of humid forests and weird smelly beasts,” Han said. “Nothing special.”

“It describes the Grand Admiral,” Leia announced, scrolling through the report. “Humanoid alien, blue-skinned. Karrde didn’t give us a name; just said the admiral was after some lizards living in the forest around Karrde’s base.”

“You think it’s the same guy from Sluis Van?” Luke asked.

“If he’s really a Grand Admiral, then yes,” said Leia. She scanned the report again, reading it for what must have been the sixth or seventh time. “Palpatine’s Grand Admirals were known for standing out from the crowd. Some were particularly competent, some were just well-connected. Based on the shipyard attack, I think we can assume this is one of the competent ones.”

“Karrde doesn’t happen to have a photo of the guy, does he?” Han asked. Leia handed him the datapad so he could read the report himself. There were no holos attached, but Karrde’s description was a little more detailed than the summary Leia had given. The Grand Admiral was humanoid, roughly two meters tall, blue-skinned, dark-haired, and…

...he had red eyes.

Red eyes?

Han scrolled up and read the report again, this time from the beginning, but there was no further information given. Red eyes … could it be the same species as the man he’d met in the Outer Rim cantina? Han had assumed Thrawn was a hybrid, with at least one human parent, but it was possible, he supposed, that there was a whole race of blue-skinned humanoids with red eyes out there. He highlighted the description in Karrde’s report and passed the datapad back to Leia.

“You guys know of any species like that?” he asked.

Luke crowded in between them to read the description over Leia’s shoulder. He frowned.

“No,” he said, even as Leia shook her head. “I know Wroonians have blue skin…”

“But not red eyes,” Leia told him. “Same with Pantorans.”

Han shrugged uneasily. “Maybe it’s a Pantoran with conjunctivitis,” he suggested.

Luke chuckled at that, but Leia just gave him a dry, exasperated look. 

“It could happen,” Han insisted. “I mean, what other option is there? Think of the Unknown Alien Protocols — for this guy to be a whole new race, he’d have to come from the Unknown Regions, and we all know how likely that is. An alien in the Empire — sure, _maybe_. But an alien from the _Unknown Regions_?”

“Admittedly,” said Leia, “it does seem far-fetched. But why would Karrde lie?”

Maybe because Han had gotten drunk with Karrde two months ago and spilled the beans about his blue-skinned lover in the Outer Rim cantina. Maybe because Karrde loved nothing more than messing with his fellow smugglers. Maybe because Karrde was kind of a dick.

“I don’t know, honey,” said Han aloud. “I just don’t know.”

* * *

The beep of his comlink woke him up so abruptly that Han almost fell out of his narrow bunk when he rolled over to answer it. Groggily, he sneaked a glance into the cockpit, where Chewie was keeping an eye on the controls, and fumbled for his comlink in the dark. He brushed a hand through his hair and held the comm to his lips.

“Yeah?” he said, his voice coming out raspy from sleep. “Uh, I mean, Captain Solo speaking.”

“Han, it’s me,” came Leia’s voice. “I just wanted to keep you updated. You know that Grand Admiral we’ve been hearing about?”

Han sat up, frowning, now a little more awake than before. “Yeah?” he said. He shoved his feet into his boots and plodded over to the cockpit without tying the laces. Chewie glanced over his shoulder and gargled a greeting as Han came in, but Han didn’t respond; he scanned the sensor data instead. “He’s not lying in wait somewhere along this hyperlane, is he?” he asked Leia.

“No, nothing like that,” Leia said. “In fact, we don’t know where he is. But we did get a name.”

“Oh, well, do tell,” Han said, slumping into the copilot seat next to Chewie.

“ _Thrawn_ ,” Leia said, pronouncing the foreign word carefully and with a note of triumph in her voice.

Han stared down at his comlink, not blinking, not breathing. Chewie glanced sideways at him, his face expressionless.

“Come again?” Han said.

“Thrawn,” said Leia again. 

“Thrawn?” Han repeated. He felt dazed.

“Wroroorowarr,” Chewie murmured. Han hit the mute button on his comlink and hissed,

“Do _not_ call me ‘Loading Screen.’ You know I hate that. I’m not loading, I’m _thinking_. Don’t be an asshole.”

“Hrrrrngh,” said Chewie, rolling his eyes. Now more irritated than confused, Han clicked the comlink on again.

“Leia,” he said, with false calmness, “is it possible you misheard the name?”

He could hear the frown in Leia’s voice when she said, “Misheard?”

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of a weird name, isn’t it?” said Han. “Never met anyone named _Thrawn_ before. Maybe your informant got it wrong.”

“What else could it be?” Leia asked.

Sweating a little, Han said, “Grand Admiral Ron, perhaps?”

An exasperated sigh dissolved into static over the comm. “It’s definitely Thrawn,” Leia told him. “I had Karrde spell it out for me. T-H-R-A-W-N. Grand Admiral Thrawn.”

Han rubbed the pad of his thumb over the comlink, thinking hard. He stared out the viewport and ran over the possibilities in his head. Blue-skinned or not, it simply _couldn’t_ be the same guy. The man he’d met wasn’t on the up-and-up — nobody you met in an Outer Rim cantina ever was — but that certainly didn’t make him an Imperial. In fact, if anything, his willingness to step foot in a cantina like that just proved Han’s point. Imperials were uptight, prudish, rule-following prigs — they didn’t go bar-hopping. They didn’t drive rusty old freighters or dress in sexy form-fitting tunics.

They _definitely_ didn’t fuck random smugglers they met at the bar.

He glanced at Chewie and caught the Wookiee quickly looking away.

“Leia, I’m gonna have to call you back,” Han said.

* * *

“Now, I don’t wanna hear a _peep_ out of you,” Han said darkly as he landed the Falcon. Chewie shot him a look from the copilot’s seat, but obediently said nothing. “And this is just between you and me, alright? This is just a quick in-and-out. No need for the council to find out. Got it?”

“Rrrghooowrhgh,” Chewie said.

“Good,” said Han. He switched off the engine and pushed back in his seat, adjusting his vest and shirt. “I’m just gonna pop in real quick, okay? You wanna come or you wanna stay here?”

With a dramatic sigh, Chewie propped his feet up on the dashboard and pulled out a datapad to keep him occupied.

“I’ll be right back,” Han promised.

And without another word, he rushed off the Millenium Falcon and outside, to the same Outer Rim cantina where he’d first met Thrawn.

“In and out,” he muttered to himself as he walked in. The cantina was just as crowded now as it had been last time. He pushed his way to the bar slowly, craning his neck from one direction to the next as he walked. He catalogued each and every alien face, peering deep into the shadows and getting uncomfortably close to a few hooded individuals to make sure he wasn’t missing anyone.

Once he reached the bar, he accepted a shot of Port in the Storm and drank it with an intense frown on his face.

“Hey,” he said to the tender. “You see a blue-skinned guy with red eyes in here lately?”

The bartender shook his head, face utterly neutral. Han couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. He slapped a few credits down on the bar, grabbed his glass, and walked away. His few inquiries of the patrons at the cantina were equally fruitless; none of the regulars had seen Thrawn, though they’d seen plenty of Wroonians passing through.

Han left the cantina shaking his head. He wasn’t sure what to think; the evidence was inconclusive. Thrawn had never claimed to be a regular here, after all — he could have been just another smuggler passing through, like Han. He hopped back into the Millenium Falcon and re-took the pilot’s seat, hoping he didn’t look as disappointed as he felt.

“Worrororiaghh,” Chewie said, giving him a knowing look.

“No, I didn’t get laid,” Han snapped. “He wasn’t there.”

He realized his mistake only when Chewie barked out a laugh. Blushing furiously, Han flipped the engines on and steered the Falcon away.

* * *

It wasn’t until the siege of Coruscant that Han got the answers he was looking for. He was sitting in Imperial Palace like everyone else when ten Imperial Interdictor Cruisers and eight Katana-class Dreadnaughts started popping up in orbit, blocking all entry or exit from the region immediately surrounding Coruscant. They were followed by six Star Destroyers — then another two — and uncountable squadrons of TIE fighters. When the Star Destroyers started pulling in cloaked asteroids, Han and Leia shared a grim look.

The New Republic had no resources. They were done for, and all of them knew it. The sense of confusion and general panic hadn’t yet begun to fade when a transmission came through.

It was unlike anything Han had seen since before the battle of Endor, when Imperial propaganda was more commonplace. The holo was high-quality, and it was being beamed all over Coruscant, taking over family holoprojectors and public pods alike. The deck in the former Imperial Palace fizzled before the transmission came up, showing the impressive interior of an Imperial Star Destroyer.

And then, before any of them really had time to process what they were seeing, a Grand Admiral stepped into view.

He was blue-skinned, alright. And yes, he had glowing red eyes — Karrde hadn’t mentioned the ‘glowing’ part, but there they were. He wore the dress white uniform of a Grand Admiral, the tunic accentuating his broad shoulders and narrow waist, the color complementing his skin. Above the collar was a classically handsome face with high cheekbones and shimmering blue-black hair swept back from his forehead.

Han’s mouth went dry. His palms were coated in sweat.

“This is Grand Admiral Thrawn of the Imperial Star Destroyer _Chimaera_ ,” said the best lay of Han’s life. “I invite the New Republic to transmit your terms of surrender over Channel 8-DX-Z1.”

The transmission ended immediately after that, with no further discussion. Han barely heard anything in the uproar that followed. He ran shaky hands over his eyes, trying to rub a sense of feeling back into his numb features. When he took his hands away, shaking his head to clear it, he saw Chewie watching him from across the room. 

“Wrooorooroogh,” Chewie said. Han grimaced. The few people in the room who spoke Shyriiwook turned to look at him, their eyebrows furrowed.

“Han,” said Leia, “why did Chewie just tell you, ‘ _good going, slut_ ’?”


End file.
